Sunday 6 August 2017

The Blessing of God Is in Our Defeat (Genesis 32:22-31)


(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on August 6, 2017, Proper 13)



Is Blessing Happiness?

Today concludes our journey with Jacob.  We began four weeks ago.  Jacob was wrestling then.  Even before he was born.

Today he is wrestling still.  Not much has changed.

But today, everything is changed.  Today Jacob receives God’s blessing.

What is God’s blessing?  That is the question we have been asking this last four weeks.

According to Jacob, blessing is whatever you’re able to get your hands on.  Blessing means taking what’s there for the taking.  Blessing means success: power, prestige, wealth.  So far, Jacob has had a lot of success.  He has been able to get his hands on his brother’s birthright, his father’s blessing, his father-in-law’s daughters, and much of his father-in-law’s fortune.  Jacob has done alright for himself.  I would say he’s probably happy.

Happiness.  That’s about as much of a blessing as anyone could ask for, right?

The Dark Side to Jacob’s Happiness

Perhaps.  But in Jacob’s “happiness” we also see a dark side.  The dark side to getting what you want is struggle.  Not only the struggle to get ahead, but also the struggle to stay ahead.  The struggle not to lose what you’ve won.

In the verses that immediately precede today’s story, we are told that Jacob is “greatly afraid and distressed” (32:7).  Why?  His brother Esau is coming to meet him.  With four hundred men by his side.  To Jacob, this is dark news.  All that he has won could soon become lost.  The struggle never ends.

At the beginning of today’s scripture, night has fallen.  Jacob sends his family and all that he has across the river ahead of him.  It seems a rather odd move.  Why doesn’t he join them?  Perhaps he is a coward and simply wants a shield between him and his brother.  But more likely, I think, he’s in a reflective mood. 

They say that before you die, your entire life flashes before you.  Perhaps sensing the end, Jacob wants to stand back for a moment, separate, alone, to try to drink it all in: to look across the river upon the sum total of his life, all that he has won, all that is his.  Perhaps he is trying to claim the happiness that he has been struggling for his whole life.  Perhaps he is trying to feel it.  Because perhaps right now all his success feels strangely hollow.  And so he stands back and gazes upon all that is his, and he tries to savor it.  He tries to convince himself that this is happiness—he has been happy, hasn’t he?

“Like a Drowning Man”

And it’s in the pitch black of that moment, when Jacob’s happiness feels hauntingly hollow, that a shadow seizes him and throws him into the dust of the earth.  Dislodged from his lonely thoughts, Jacob does what he has always done.  He wrestles.  He and the stranger tumble about the ground, seizing at each other’s heels, holding fast to whatever can be grabbed, never letting go.

Jacob exerts every last ounce of energy and appears to be gaining the upper hand.  But then as the night nears its end, Jacob suddenly feels his hip put out of joint.  How did that happen?  The stranger merely touched it.  It is almost as though the stranger had been waiting to touch his hip just so, as though he had been waiting until Jacob had given everything, so that when he was overcome, he would know that he was truly and completely overcome.  With his hip thrown out, the tide has turned.  Jacob still hangs on—only now he grabs the stranger “not [out] of violence but [out] of need, like…a drowning man.”[1]

As the dark of night gives way to the hazy glow of morning, the stranger speaks for the first time.  “Let me go, for morning is upon us.”  But Jacob holds on for dear life.  “Not until you bless me,” he gasps.  So the stranger asks his name, and Jacob tells him.  Then while the two remain in an embrace that looks less and less like fighting and more and more like friendship, the stranger proclaims: “No longer will you be called Jacob, but Israel” (32:28).

Jacob Wrestles Now with Something Else

In the Old Testament, names contain entire stories.  Do you remember the story of Ishmael and Hagar?  Put their names together—Ishmael Hagar—and you get “God hears” “the outsider,” which is, in fact, the truth of Ishmael and Hagar’s own story.  The name Jacob means something like wrestler.[2]  The name Israel means something like wrestler, too.[3]  In other words, Jacob’s new name is not a great departure from his old name.   But there is one tiny difference, and it makes all the difference.  It’s the “El” in “Israel.”  “El” means God.  In the past, Jacob wrestled with the world: his brother, his father, his father-in-law, all in an effort to get ahead, to get what they had.  But now the terms of conflict have been reversed.  No longer does Jacob wrestle with the world.  Now he wrestles with God.

From “Jacob” to “Israel.”  The names tell the story.  The stranger seems to be saying, “In the past, you, Jacob, held onto the heels of others.  Now you will hold onto God.  You will not let go, and neither will God.  Now…let go of the heels you have been grasping at so that you can hold onto God.”[4]

And sure enough, when Jacob meets Esau the next day, he lets go of his heel: he gives him many of his possessions and also a blessing.  Which blessing?  The Bible does not specify.  But I’d like to think that what Jacob gave Esau was the birthright and blessing that he had taken earlier from Esau.  Power, prestige, wealth—whatever happiness can be found in these things—this is no longer what Jacob is grabbing after.  Now he is wrestling with something else.

Wrestling with God, Hoping to Lose

The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis recalls from his early years a visit to an old monastery.  There he spoke with an old monk, Father Makarios. 

He asked the monk, “Do you still wrestle with the devil?”

“Not any longer, my child,” Father Makarios replied.  “I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me.  He doesn’t have the strength….  [Now] I wrestle with God.”

“With God!” Nikos exclaimed in astonishment.  “And you hope to win?”

“I hope to lose, my child,” the monk said.  “[But] my bones…continue to resist.”[5]

Our Defeat Is Love’s Victory

The good news of God’s blessing can also be difficult news.  Because it means losing.  And losing is something we resist.

Do you remember when Jacob first got an inkling of God’s blessing?  It also happened at night.  It grabbed him in the one moment when he was not grabbing, in the one moment when he had made himself vulnerable.  Vulnerable to sleep.  Vulnerable to a dream.  God’s blessing was not something he could seize.  It was only something that could seize him when he was not in control.  But when Jacob woke the next morning, the dream slowly faded and he returned to his heel-grabbing ways.

The second time that God’s blessing grabs Jacob at night, though, Jacob is changed.  This time, Jacob emerges from the night a new man.  No longer does he return to wrestling with the world, struggling, taking what’s for the taking. 

Now he knows that his real struggle is with God.  And now he knows that the real blessing is in his own defeat.  When our egos are defeated, when our self-seeking will is broken—when we forgive instead of indulging our selfish desire for payback, when we welcome someone who upsets our routine, when we give to the point of self-sacrifice, whenever we lose our life for the sake of others—then God wins.  And although this experience may feel at first like a fight, like a wrestling match, like a cross…we will discover if we hold on long enough that we are held in the arms of love, the arms of blessing, the arms of God.

When we win, it’s only ever with small things and the victories themselves make us small.  But when we are defeated by the undying grip of love, then we are made anew in the blessing of God.[6]

Jacob emerged from the dark night with a limp.  Jesus emerged from the dark tomb with scars to show.  From what darkness are you emerging?  From what fight with God?  What is your blessing?  Maybe it doesn’t feel like a blessing.  Maybe it feels like a deep wound.  Maybe you’ll limp for the rest of your life. 

But if our fight is with God, then let us hold on.  And like Jacob, we might find that those fearsome arms holding us are in fact the arms of love, whose victory is our defeat.

Prayer

Beloved Opponent,
Who demands of us everything,
Before giving us everything—
Lead us from the struggles of this world
To the struggle with you,
Where we are defeated
And where your love emerges victorious,
With blessing for all.
In the name of him whose glory is the cross, Jesus Christ. 
Amen.





[1] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 7.  Much of this sermon reflects the interpretation offered by Buechner in his sermon, “The Magnificent Defeat.”
[2] More literally, “he grabs at heels.”
[3] More literally, “he contends with God,” or “God contends.”
[4] Adapted from the story’s retelling in Jonathan Sacks, Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Covenant & Conversation Series; New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2009), ebook loc. 3872.
[5] Conversation from Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (trans. Peter Bien; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), 222-223.
[6] Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Man Watching.”

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